Swanier Will Play Off Montgomery

UCONN WOMEN

STORRS — Ketia Swanier is easily the most polite, soft-spoken member of the UConn team.

That's until you use the magic word: Backup. That's when Swanier gets her back up.

``I don't like that term,'' Swanier said Monday. ``I hate it. It makes me really upset. I don't think of myself as a backup in anything.''

Last season, coach Geno Auriemma matter-of-factly termed Swanier a ``career backup point guard,'' and that was the role she performed, behind starter Renee Montgomery.

Montgomery, a sophomore, will be UConn's starter for the remainder of Swanier's career. But that should not diminish Swanier's role.

``I feel like we offset each other,'' said Swanier, a junior who averaged 3.8 points and 3 assists last season. ``We can be in the game at the same time. We can play well together. I don't think it's a competition, but in practice we guard each other hard. We make each other better. Renee is always in my ear, and vice versa. We're there for each other.

``It's like that with the whole team. We're a team. Whoever's subbing, you're either picking up the pace or keeping that same, good pace. We're all out there to play and have each other's backs. It's about making our team better.''

In the Big East and NCAA tournaments last season, Swanier cemented her role off the bench as a change-of-pace playmaker who sparked UConn's fastbreak with defensive rebounds and hard pushes up the floor. In seven postseason games, Swanier averaged 20.2 minutes to Montgomery's 33.9.

``I don't look at Ketia as the co-point guard, because their games are totally different,'' junior forward Charde Houston said. ``When they do stuff on the court, we get something out of both of them. When Ketia comes into the game, we don't miss a beat. That's what you have to look at.''

That Swanier was so successful in the postseason might have come as a surprise after UConn's regular season-ending loss Feb. 27 at Rutgers. The Huskies scored one point in the final 11:38 of the 48-42 loss, and Swanier was part of the problem, with five turnovers in 15 minutes.

After making back-to-back turnovers in one stretch, Swanier's confidence was shaken seemingly beyond the point of no return.

``She's in the carwash and she can't get out,'' Auriemma said. ``She comes over to the bench, and we're trying to get her to raise her awareness and intensity level and fight it. And instead, the body language was, `I'm fried.'

``The message we sent to her was, `You can't be fried. You have to learn to function when you're fried.' It's an obligation, and above all else, Ketia has a tremendous sense of obligation. When she feels like she's not living up to her responsibility, she feels the weight of the world on her shoulders. And that game hit her pretty hard.''

In the six days before the start of the Big East tournament, Swanier regrouped with help from her father, Cornell.

``I remember that night,'' Swanier said. ``I talked to my father a lot. I remember one time he told me, `Once you hit rock bottom, you can't go anywhere but up.' That went hand-in-hand with that game. You can't get any worse than that game. I was really terrible. But you keep it moving. We got into the Big East tournament and the Big Dance after that. You can either make things worse or pick your head up and play and have fun.''

In the first game after Rutgers, a Big East tournament quarterfinal victory over Notre Dame, Swanier had a career-high 11 points in 26 minutes. A player not known for her outside shot, Swanier was 4-for-6 against the Irish, then went 4-for-4 against Georgia in the NCAA regional semifinals in Bridgeport.

``From that point on, she just took off,'' Auriemma said. ``Given her size and level of ability, if she can take the ball from foul line to foul line and make people defend her on the move and get to the rim or find people open or make 10 footers, I think she'll be doing something that every team wants.

``I think she knows Renee's our point guard, but she also feels like, so am I. There isn't this self-doubt. That comes from having success and working at it. I think she has a real high sense of confidence right now.''